Let us suppose that which may very likely happen, as ecclesiastics are only men, that the excommunication which they have been led to pronounce has been prompted by some error or some passion; he who is exposed to a censure so precipitate is clearly justified in his conscience before God; the declaration issued against him can produce no effect upon the life to come. Deprived of exterior communion with the true Church, he may still enjoy the consolation of the interior communion. Justified by his conscience, he has nothing to fear in a future existence from the judgment of God, his only true judge. It is then a great question, as to canonical rights, whether the clergy, their head, or any ecclesiastical body whatever, can excommunicate the sovereign or the magistracy, under any pretext, or for any abuse of their power? This question is essentially scandalous, and the simple doubt a direct rebellion. In fact, the first duty of man in society is to respect the magistrate, and to advance his respectability, and you pretend to have a right to censure and set him aside. Who has given you this absurd and pernicious right? Is it God, who governs the political world by delegated sovereignty, and who ordains that society shall subsist by subordination? The first ecclesiastics at the rise of Christianity--did they conceive themselves authorized to excommunicate Tiberius, Nero, Claudius, or even Constantine, who was a heretic? How then have pretensions thus monstrous, ideas thus atrocious, wicked attempts equally condemned by reason and by natural and religious rights, been suffered to last so long? If a religion exists which teaches like horrors, society ought to proscribe it, as directly subversive of the repose of mankind. The cry of whole nations is already lifted up against these pretended canonical laws, dictated by ambition and by fanaticism. It is to be hoped that sovereigns, better instructed in their rights, and supported by the fidelity of their people, will terminate abuses so enormous, and which have caused so many misfortunes. The author of the "Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations" has been the first to forcibly expose the atrocity of enterprises of this nature. SECTION V. _Of the Superintendence of Doctrine._ The sovereign is not the judge of the truth of doctrine; he may judge for himself, like all other men; but he ought to take cognizance of it in respect to everything which relates to civil order, whether in regard to purport or delivery. This is the general rule from which magistrates ought never to depart. Nothing in a doctrine merits the attention of the police, except as it interests public order: it is the influence of doctrine upon manners that decides its importance. Doctrines which have a distant connection only with good conduct can never be fundamental. Truths which conduce to render mankind gentle, humane, obedient to the laws and to the government, interest the State, and proceed evidently from God.